New app for museum buffs

A mobile application that is guaranteed to enhance the museum-going experience has just been released by Digify Inc., a techno-creative research and development laboratories that specialize in augmented reality.

The dynamic company was commissioned by Samsung Philippines to develop the app called “Facets.” The application, deployed on mobile phones, tablets and smart television, were unveiled at the Relative Realities exhibition in Yuchengco Museum, which features artists Ambie Abaño, Ernest Concepcion, Jason Montinola, Leeroy New, Arturo Sanchez Jr. and Josephine Turalba.

Facets employs augmented reality (AR) to reveal a hidden layer of digital experience into physical art objects. This layer comes in the form of motion graphics, video or 3D and multimedia objects, which Digify also produced.

“This exhibit is a good showcase of convergent art where art and technology are equally essential in completing the experience. In future implementations, you can expect to see a more integrated creative process where digital is not just an add-on but at the very core of the art piece,” said Judd Gallares, president and chief operating officer of Digify.

Digify is a pioneer in augmented reality in the Philippines. It was the first to launch its own proprietary AR engine, which can recognize visual as well as sonic markers.

Augmented Reality is a live view of the real, physical world whose elements are augmented (or supplemented) by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.

“We started by using open-source technologies but eventually developed our own engine in order to accommodate customization requests from our clients. And we’ve continued to evolve the product by adding modules that could recognize new triggers, sonic being the most recent one,” put in Joan Bulauitan, the company’s general manager.

This year, Digify transformed its AR technology into a real-time pattern recognition software that can detect and recognize signatures emitted by various media sources using access devices such as computers, tablets and smartphones.

The Facets mobile application is now available for download from the Google Play Store. Relative Realities will run at the Yuchengco Museum until September 8.